It is unclear who runs the account, although Russia's official Ministry of Foreign Affairs Twitter account promoted the Telegram channel on Saturday and claimed it was operated by "a group of experts & journalists." Apparently upbeat developments in Russia's discussions with Ukraine helped at least temporarily send investors back into risk assets. Russian President Vladimir Putin said during a meeting with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko that there were "certain positive developments" occurring in the talks with Ukraine, according to a transcript of their meeting. Putin added that discussions were happening "almost on a daily basis." This ability to mix the public and the private, as well as the ability to use bots to engage with users has proved to be problematic. In early 2021, a database selling phone numbers pulled from Facebook was selling numbers for $20 per lookup. Similarly, security researchers found a network of deepfake bots on the platform that were generating images of people submitted by users to create non-consensual imagery, some of which involved children. The Security Service of Ukraine said in a tweet that it was able to effectively target Russian convoys near Kyiv because of messages sent to an official Telegram bot account called "STOP Russian War." Investors took profits on Friday while they could ahead of the weekend, explained Tom Essaye, founder of Sevens Report Research. Saturday and Sunday could easily bring unfortunate news on the war front—and traders would rather be able to sell any recent winnings at Friday’s earlier prices than wait for a potentially lower price at Monday’s open.
from us
